1990 Photo Contest, Spot News, Singles, Honorable mention

Photographer

Anthony Suau

After hammering at the concrete near Brandenburg Gate throughout the night, West Germans attempt to climb the Berlin Wall at dawn, but they are repulsed by police with a water-cannon.

In January 1989, East German leader Erich Honecker said he expected the Berlin Wall to endure for another century. By November it had become an anachronism—and so had Honecker. Hundreds of thousands of East Germans fled their country by various routes until the government decided on 9 November to allow free travel to the West. Two days later the frustration that had been building up over nearly three decades was finally unleashed on the symbol of division that the wall had become.